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Saturday, 25 October 2014

Zombie weight-lifting

I’m wrecked again. A bit of a car
crash. Limping on one foot. Typing one handed. Sitting is sort of painful. My ears are kinda ringing. But hey, in the scheme of things, it could be
worse. A lot worse.

Let's look on the bright side. Because, as I said to James when he was whining recently, things can always be worse. I mean, we could be living in a prison surrounded by zombies, with nutjob psychos attacking us from the outside and some asswipe virus attacking us from the inside, and our own fears and anxieties attacking us from within our own minds, couldn't we? Oh wait...

There are benefits though. I mean, to being pretty helpless (not living in the zombie apocalypse). Kate came
over on a mercy mission to sew on some badges for James (yeah, can’t sew - which, actually is really handy, so to speak, as there is little I loathe more than sewing). Rachel drove to pick up Adrian from the
station (ditto).
It’s like care in the community:
if it goes on like this, I’ll get meals on wheels, a stairlift, a Winceyette nightie and a disability allowance. Wishful thinking, huh?

But really, it hasn’t been that bad, sitting in front of the fire, eating
knock-down sushi from the Co-op, piling ginger on blobs of rice and balancing dollops
of wasabi on top – one-handedly. And yes (how did you guess?) watching back to back episodes of The Walking Dead with James– both eyedly. Yeah, I get the irony. All too well.

James thought it was pretty funny. 'You'd be stuffed if we really did have the zombie apocalypse now, Mum,' he said, poking the fire with a poker whose end had turned literally red-hot. 'I mean, what you gonna do? Drag yourself away?' I raised an eyebrow (those are still working pretty well). 'Yeah, thanks, Coral.'

Anyhow. There came a point when I
thought, actually this can’t go on. It’s
self-indulgent. So… I went back to the
gym. Because I remembered Mangalo at
Yobaba Lounge (report coming soon on Queen of Retreats) saying that you don’t
even need to be able to stand to do yoga - you can do it sitting in a
chair; hell, you can even do it lying on the floor. And so, going on that logic, I figured
I could still do the gym, even if I can’t run, walk, climb or cycle. Right?
Right.

And I remembered my friend John who had Motor Neurone Disease. Right at the end, when he couldn’t even
breathe on his own, he took up meditation, started doing self-healing. His wife rolled her eyes but he shrugged
(well, he would have done if he could) and laughed (ditto) and said ‘Well, can
you think of a better time to start?’ And, really, there's no answer to that, is there?

So I figured the least I could do was to lift some weights while I was waiting. So... Sitting.
Benching. Lying. And it was going so well…I mean, it’s amazing what
you can do with half a body (and a long gone mind). Until I picked up a 20kg weight and…er…dropped
it on the one still functioning foot. Seriously,
you have to laugh. You really do. Well, I did. In fact, I still am. What a bloody idiot, huh?